Teachers are the backbone of the education system in Nigeria, a qualified and good teacher equals a quality education for a child, a quack teacher equals a rudimentary education for a child.
Good teaching skills go a long way in a child’s education, and the best way to ensure that is by equipping the teachers with the tools they need. Having the best teaching resources is instrumental to success in the classroom.
Teaching resources are supposed to be equipment and tools that will boost learning engagement in the class, they are also supposed to help a teacher manage their work, and also make teachers in Nigeria more effective.
Tools specifically meant to enhance the teacher’s performance should be of primary importance in the school system. There are apps and educational sites that can help you enhance your teaching capabilities.
READ ALSO: TIPS FOR TEACHERS WHO WANT TO VENTURE INTO ONLINE TUTORING
In this post, we have highlighted some teaching tools that teachers in Nigeria will find useful and relevant when teaching in the classroom.
Listed below are some of the best teaching tools in Nigeria, most of which are online teaching tools because of the technological age we find ourselves in.
Edmodo is an app that enables teachers, students and parents to connect simultaneously. Using the Edmodo app, teachers can organize quizzes and give assignments to their students.
The app has two variants, one for the students and parents, and one for the teachers. The teachers can create ‘classes’ and share the class code with their students for them to join. Any update by the teacher from his/her end is seen by the student and their parent.
Edmodo has millions of downloads from the Google Play Store and has millions of users worldwide, the app is trusted by many educators in the world.
Touchscreen TV’s are being installed more and more often in schools, especially in universities. They have seen the potential it has in helping instructors when teaching in a class.
LED display smart screens are big enough for everyone in a class to see, and because they work with the android OS, you can install useful apps to it. In fact, the smart screen uses an app called Whiteboard to let the teacher write on the screen using a touchscreen marker or their fingers.
Perhaps, the biggest advantage of the smart screen for education in Nigeria is you can use it to show multimedia files, meaning you can show videos, images, charts and even play audio using it. That enables interactive learning for the students.
Edufirst.ng is an educational website, a sister organization to Skool Media. The organization equips Nigerian schools with technological advancements that were long overdue for the system of education in Nigeria.
Edufirst has organized teaching competitions and robotic boot camps and e-learning schemes in the past, and the blog is the main channel of information distribution for its activities.
Mostly geared towards teachers and parents, the Edufirst blog is an invaluable teaching tool and resource that most Nigerian teachers will find extremely useful and relevant. You will find tips and tricks to make you a better teacher, you will find news on the latest educational technology and how to implement them, tidbits on improving online learning, and other important updates on education news in Nigeria.
Bookmarking edufirst.ng on your web browser is worth the time and effort.
Among the teaching tools most needed is the common computer printer. Teachers need printers to print worksheets, lesson plans and other documents that are required by the teacher.
There is a lot of printing that teachers usually do outside of school premises, but with printers in the classroom, they don’t have to go far searching for a photocopy store to get their printing jobs done, and the students can take advantage of the opportunity to use it for assignments and other school projects that require printing.
Google Classroom is an extensive teaching tool that enables schools or teachers to organize the creating and distribution of learning materials. Using Google Classroom, you can create live session classrooms online, give assignments to students, and you can grade the assignments.
And they can receive your feedback on any certain assignment or work you give them. You will be seeing everything under one app, the Google Classroom. You can access it on any device, either a laptop, mobile smartphone or a tablet.
It is very versatile and you can even connect it to your calendar app and Google drive.
This is a website that offers thousands of online courses and some are for free, students and teachers alike can hop here to gain more from courses that teach about their areas of interest.
Udacity has thousands of experts offering what they know in the form of high quality videos that you can watch online.
The laptop could be the teacher’s most important tool, it has so many uses it should be a standard teaching tool in Nigeria.
The laptop can be used to store data, create documents, plan lessons, and most importantly, connect to the internet. Teachers need laptops to become effective when handling their work nowadays.
Thankfully more and more teachers are owing laptops because they understand its significance to their teaching career and its potential.
Schoology is a learning platform for schools and teachers. It is a Learning Management System or LMS that enables teachers to create lessons, coordinate and plan ahead, and assess students.
It is a collaborative network system so students and their instructors can communicate with each other during school hours and beyond, its features make it possible for them to work as a team.
Schoology is recognised as one of the best teaching tools ever created. Their interface designs which are easy to use and understand, do help matters a lot.
Class Dojo is an educational app ranked high on the Google play store for quality and popularity. It is more of a social media for classes than it is a learning management app.
Students, teachers and parents can share moments and stories and talk with each other using the app or the web version. It is mainly used by schools in the United States but its overall framework is feasible in other countries.
Every teacher needs a lesson planner, it is a teaching resource like no other and you cannot do much without it.
Each and every lesson has to be planned ahead of time, before you enter the class for the lesson, and the lesson plan needs to reflect the objectives and the goals you wish to achieve by the end of the lesson.
There are thousands of lesson planner templates online, printable ones, and you can get most of them for free. You just check the one most suitable for your class or subject you are teaching, and then print it to use.